Tag Archives: Astronomy

Astronomers from Durham University, in collaboration with the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, have discovered one of the biggest black holes ever found — over 30 billion times the mass of the Sun — by taking advantage of a phenomenon called gravitational lensing. This is the first black hole ever …

Jupiter moves ahead of the pack after the discovery of more natural satellites Jupiter has officially become the planet with the most moons in the solar system, now counted at 92, thanks to the discovery of 12 more natural satellites, astronomers have said. The previous record-holder, Saturn, has dropped to …

It took two years — and 21,400 shots — to capture an astonishing view of your spiraled galactic home, the Milky Way. On Jan. 18, astronomers released a “gargantuan” survey of the Milky Way as part of an ambitious project called the “Dark Energy Camera Plane Survey.” They captured this …

Shining only ~300 million years after the Big Bang, it may be home to the oldest stars in the universe. An international team of astronomers has recently spotted the most distant galaxy ever, located about 13.5 billion light-years away. Astronomers named this galaxy HD1, which is exceptionally bright in ultraviolet …

The United Arab Emirates’ Hope probe mission captured a striking image of Mars, taken from an altitude of around 1,325 kilometers above the red planet’s surface. The image, which was obtained on March 15 this year, was shared on the Hope Mars Mission’s official Twitter account on Sunday and has …

The first astronauts to arrive at China’s new space station carried out their debut spacewalk, marking only the second time the country’s astronauts have ventured out of their craft while in orbit. Tang Hongbo, Nie Haisheng, and Liu Boming docked with the Tiangong space station in June, beginning a three-month …

A navigation timing error sent NASA’s little Mars helicopter on a wild, lurching ride, its first major problem since it took to the Martian skies last month. The experimental helicopter, named Ingenuity, managed to land safely, officials at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory reported Thursday. “Despite unexpected motion from an image …

The dwarf planet Ceres — long believed to be a barren space rock — is an ocean world with reservoirs of seawater beneath its surface, the results of a major exploration mission showed Monday. Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and has its …

The latest successful rocket test by SpaceX could mean we’ll see humans on Mars in the next decade, funded by private entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. But will they take charge of the newly conquered Red Planet too? On a clear night, there’s nothing better than gazing …

For the first time ever, astronomers have directly imaged multiple planets orbiting a sun-like star. The European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile photographed two giant planets circling a very young analogue of our own sun that lies about 300 light-years from Earth, a new study reports. “This …

Astrophysicists on Monday published the largest-ever 3D map of the Universe, the result of an analysis of more than four million galaxies and ultra-bright, energy-packed quasars. The efforts of hundreds of scientists from around 30 institutions worldwide have yielded a “complete story of the expansion of the universe”, said Will …

A German-Russian space telescope has just acquired a breakthrough map of the sky that traces the heavens in X-rays. The image records a lot of the violent action in the cosmos – instances where matter is being accelerated, heated and shredded. Feasting black holes, exploding stars, and searingly hot gas. …

Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, is moving away from its planet a hundred times faster than previously established, according to a new study. The giant moon isn’t alone in this behavior; other moons among the 150 known moons in our solar system are also slowly distancing themselves from the planets they …

Astronomers have confirmed the existence of Proxima b, an Earth-size exoplanet orbiting the closest star to our sun. The European Southern Observatory’s High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) detected the planet in 2016. The Very Large Telescope based in Chile has a new and more powerful spectrograph named ESPRESSO, …

NASA and SpaceX on Friday urged everyone to stay home for the first home launch of astronauts in nearly a decade because of the coronavirus pandemic. Top officials warned the public against traveling to Florida for the May 27 launch of two NASA astronauts aboard a SpaceX rocket to the …

NASA’s planet-hunting mission TESS has found its first potentially habitable exoplanet the size of Earth orbiting a star about 100 light-years from Earth, according to the agency. The findings were announced during the 235th meeting of the American Astronomical Society on Monday in Honolulu. The planet is part of a …

Pakistan’s technology minister has confirmed that the country will be sending its first astronaut to space within the next three years, with the assistance of China. In an interview Sunday, Minister Fawad Chaudhry said that the selection process will begin in 2020 as Pakistan and its partner China commence preparations …

India lost contact with a spacecraft it was trying to land on the moon on Saturday, its space agency said, in a setback for the nation’s ambitious plans to become the first country to probe the unexplored lunar south pole. The lander of the Chandrayaan-2 moon mission was attempting a …

US space agency NASA is investigating what may be the first crime committed in outer space, The New York Times reported Saturday. Astronaut Anne McClain is accused of identity theft and improperly accessing her estranged wife’s private financial records while on a sixth-month mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS), …

A stargazer landed the shot of a lifetime on Wednesday after he captured extremely rare footage of a mysterious flash of light on Jupiter, which may have been an elusive meteor explosion. Texas astrophotographer Ethan Chappel captured the incredible sight while he was filming the planet, and said the event …